Shrewsbury 3 Birmingham City 2 - Ollie Westbury analysis
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00:00Shrewsbury Town 3, Birmingham City 2. The Gareth Ainsworth era gets off to a winning
00:07start in what was quite frankly an absolutely exhilarating and brilliant afternoon at the
00:11Crowd Meadow in Shropshire. Town were full value and good value for the three points
00:16against Chris Davies' Birmingham City that have spent an absolute fortune to assemble
00:21their squad and will expect to be promoted automatically otherwise that is a failure
00:26of a season for Blues. But Shrewsbury, as I mentioned, good value for the victory. They
00:33went ahead in the 30th minute after nullifying Blues in the opening 30 minutes. They went
00:38ahead through Aaron Pierre, quite ironic actually that a former Gareth Ainsworth player in Pierre
00:44managed to get on the score sheet. They worked together at Wickham. He volleyed in after
00:50Tom Bloxham had done brilliantly to keep in Mal Benning's deep free kick. John Marcus
00:54added a second, a brilliant counter attack from Shrewsbury who were lining up in a 4-3-1-2
00:59formation to score a second. They'd have been disappointed to have conceded just before
01:03the break. You kind of felt at that stage that really, really did give Blues a way back
01:09into the game. But after half time, Town continued to look like a threat. They hit the bar through
01:14Marcus and then scored again when Bloxham smuggled the ball over the line. It was a
01:18brilliant back to the wall kind of last 30 minutes and Shrewsbury have not defended well
01:23large parts of this season. In fact, for the whole parts of this season, they've kept
01:27just one clean sheet in League action. But they managed to see it home. They did concede
01:32a penalty, so it did go to 3-2, but Shrewsbury were really, really good value for that victory.
01:38It raises morale. It raises them off the foot of the League One table, even if that is only
01:42temporary. But Town will be absolutely delighted to have finally got another win at home this
01:48season. Gareth Ainsworth was full of energy, full of enthusiasm post-match, just as he
01:53was on the touchline throughout the 90 minutes of the clash against Birmingham City. No one
01:58expected them to beat Blues, including myself, but I suppose Gareth Ainsworth was perhaps
02:05and his players the ones that believed that they could get something out of the game and
02:08perhaps that is a lesson to all of us to not write off Shrewsbury under Ainsworth. Finish
02:143-2 here. All your reaction, head to shropshirestar.com.